Last updated June 2026. These guidelines explain what each garden action means and what's expected of everyone planting here.
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ListSeed is a place to plant ideas, questions, or discussion points and see how the community reacts to them. Some seeds will grow into trees. Some will wilt. Some will do both at once — and that's not a bug, that's a genuinely interesting seed.
The garden only works if people use the tools the way they're meant to be used. Here's what each one means.
Every seed earns growth points as the community engages with it. Each 💧 water is worth 2 points and each 🌿 branch is worth 10 points — branching counts more because it takes more effort and adds more to the discussion.
The progress bar on each seed shows how many points it has earned and how far it is from the next stage. Comments don't count toward growth — water and branches are what grow a seed.
Visit your profile to see badges for how many seeds you've planted, and how many have grown into sprouts, saplings, or full trees. Seeds that reach Tree status are featured forever in the 🏆 Hall of Fame.
Water means "I support this" or "this is worth discussing" — not necessarily "I agree with this." You can water an idea you disagree with if you think it's a good-faith, interesting seed worth growing. Each water earns the seed 2 growth points, helping it sprout, become a sapling, and eventually a tree.
Wilt means "I push back on this" or "I disagree." It's a tension indicator, not a moderation tool — wilting something doesn't hide it or punish the author. A seed with lots of water and lots of wilt isn't a problem, it's a contested seed, and those get their own spotlight because disagreement is often where the most interesting discussion happens.
Use wilt for ideas you think are wrong, weak, or unconvincing — not as a substitute for reporting something that breaks these guidelines. That's what burn and pesticide are for.
Branching means "I want to expand on this." Use a branch to add a new angle, a counterpoint, evidence, a related idea, or a tangent worth exploring. Each branch earns the seed 10 growth points — five times what a water gives, because a branch adds real substance to the discussion.
Branches have their own 💧 water and 🥀 wilt votes. These don't affect the seed's growth points — the branch already contributed those when it was planted. Instead, branch votes determine how branches are ranked among each other: the most watered branches rise to the top when sorted by Top. Watering a branch is a way of saying "this is the most interesting take here."
Branches should relate to the seed they're attached to. If your idea is unrelated, plant your own seed instead. You can use @alias in a branch or comment to mention another user — they'll get a notification and their name becomes a clickable link.
✨ Seed authors who are supporters can 📌 pin one branch per seed — it always appears at the top regardless of sort order. Useful for dev logs, announcements, or highlighting a particularly important response.
Seeds and branches have a small formatting toolbar above the text box — select some text and click a button to make it bold, italic, underlined, struck through, code, or a link.
If you'd rather type it directly: **bold**, _italic_, __underline__, ~~strikethrough~~, `code`, and [link text](https://...). Wrapping technical terms or identifiers in backticks (like __init__) keeps them from being misread as formatting.
Comments don't have a toolbar (the box is a bit small for it), but the same syntax still works there if you want to use it.
Burn means "this content is illegal or genuinely harmful" — not "I strongly disagree" (that's wilt) and not "this person is a jerk" (that's pesticide). Reserve burn for things like:
Burning requires a confirmation step on purpose — it's not an accidental click. When enough community members burn the same content, it's automatically hidden pending review by an admin. It isn't deleted outright, and if the burns turn out to be a false alarm, it gets restored.
Misusing burn to silence opinions you simply dislike is itself a guideline violation and repeated false burns will result in account review.
These are examples, not an exhaustive list — admins use judgment for situations not explicitly covered here, with the goal of keeping the garden safe and worth participating in.
Pesticide means "this person's behavior is toxic" — aimed at a user, not a single piece of content. Use it for patterns like:
Pesticide flags accumulate on a user's account, not on individual posts. Enough flags trigger a temporary mute while an admin reviews the situation — the account isn't banned outright. Admins can dismiss the flags, keep the mute in place, or escalate to a ban depending on what they find.
Pesticiding someone simply because you wilted their seed and didn't like the reply is a violation of these guidelines. Disagreement is the whole point of a contested seed — it's not grounds for a pesticide flag.
These are examples, not an exhaustive list — admins use judgment for situations not explicitly covered here, with the goal of keeping the garden safe and worth participating in.
A ban is the last step, not the first. It usually happens after one of these:
If your account is banned, you won't be able to log in. We try to be fair and only ban when it's genuinely warranted — disagreement, a single wilted seed, or an unpopular opinion is never grounds for a ban on its own.
ListSeed is semi-anonymous — your alias doesn't have to be your real name, and that's intentional. It gives people room to share ideas they might not feel comfortable putting their real name next to. But semi-anonymous isn't the same as consequence-free: every action here is still tied to an account, and that account is the one that gets muted, reviewed, or banned if guidelines aren't followed.
A streak counts the number of days in a row you've been active on ListSeed. Any meaningful action counts — planting a seed, watering one, or adding a branch. You don't need to do all three; any one of them keeps your streak alive.
ListSeed uses a pause, not reset model. If you miss a day, your streak doesn't go back to zero — it just pauses and picks up from where it left off when you return. No pressure.
Your streak is shown on your profile page. Reaching a 14-day streak unlocks the Gold color and Double Ring frame for your avatar.
Every account has a personal avatar — a colored circle showing your initials. The default is Garden Green, but you can unlock new colors and frames by participating in the community. Unlocks are permanent once earned.
You can see which colors and frames you've unlocked, and what's still locked, on your profile page under the Avatar section. Locked options are shown greyed out with a 🔒 so you always know what's coming and how to earn it.
Unlocks are tied to things you'd naturally do anyway — planting seeds, growing them, building a streak — so they reward genuine participation rather than gaming the system.
Found something worth coming back to? Tap 🍀 Save to garden on any seed to add it to My Garden — a private list only you can see. Saving doesn't affect water/wilt counts, growth points, or anything public; it's just a personal reading list.
You can save up to 6 seeds. Growing a seed to 🌳 Tree (or supporting via Ko-fi) unlocks ✨ Supporter status, which removes this limit entirely — see below.
Supporters get a ✨ badge next to their alias, a custom alias color, analytics on their own seeds (views, water rate, engagement, and wilt rate), unlimited saved seeds in My Garden, and the ability to 📌 pin one branch per seed. Supporter status is cosmetic and informational only — it never affects votes, visibility, or how seeds are ranked.
Grow a seed to 🌳 Tree status and you'll be granted Supporter status automatically — no payment needed. You can also support ListSeed directly via Ko-fi. See the Supporters page for details on both paths.
Found a gardener whose seeds you keep coming back to? Tap + Follow on their profile. When they plant something new, you'll get a notification in your bell, and their seeds will appear in your Following feed — accessible from the menu.
Follower and following counts are visible on every profile. Who specifically follows you stays private. Following is completely separate from saving seeds — follow someone to track their future posts, save a seed to come back to a specific discussion.
Every seed you grow to Tree status becomes a permanent tree in your Forest — built entirely from your real activity on ListSeed. No shop, nothing to buy, nothing to manage. It just grows as you do.
Not every tree looks the same. Most are calm, common trees — but the way a seed grows along the way (how much discussion it sparks, how it grows over time) can shape what it becomes. Some seeds grow into something rarer. Nobody can predict exactly what until the moment a tree is fully grown.
Watch closely once a seed becomes a Sapling — sometimes there's a hint of what's coming.
Visit any gardener's Forest from their profile, or search for them directly on the Forest page.
💧 Water = worth discussing · 🥀 Wilt = I disagree · 🌿 Branch = let's expand this · 🔥 Burn = this is illegal/harmful, not just wrong · 🐛 Pesticide = this person's behavior is the problem, not their opinion
When in doubt: disagree with wilt, escalate harm with burn or pesticide, and remember that a heated, contested seed is often a sign the garden is working exactly as intended.
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